Gardening 101

Don't let my post subject fool you - I don't know the first thing about gardening. In fact, this is my first garden attempt and I am quite unsure how it will all work out. I'm having a lot of fun with it and if I only get one, singular vegetable from my efforts I will consider it a great success and be ecstatic. Here's to higher hopes though!

I rarely go in our backyard (I wish my deck had stairs) so I decided to give my plants a fighting chance and do a container garden on my deck. I'd already purchased my veggie plants (read: plants, not seeds) from our local nursery, so today I went to Wal-Mart in an effort to avoid Lowes. I ended up finding everything I needed. Potting soil, Miracle Grow for veggies and plants, and my trusty 5 gallon bucket for $2.47 a pop.

In order to make sure the buckets could properly drain excess moisture, I used my drill to screw a bunch of random holes into the bottom of the container. Notice my trusty side kick and lovely assistant, Autumn.

I am starting off small for my first attempt at a container garden. I have cucumbers (YUM) and fresh cilantro in this bucket and the one below.

I am trying two tomato varieties - early girl and roma. It should be said that I don't even like tomatoes, but I like tomato sauce and salsa - which will go great with my cilantro! =) I must say that the Dumfries Nursery and Garden center off Route 1 is the way to go. Their plants are grown in house and so inexpensive compared to the big chains.

Two varieties of green peppers. I go through these fast in my kitchen!

There you have it - my little garden in the corner of my deck. My greatest challenge will be keeping them alive, second only to keeping Autumn out of the dirt.

In addition to my veggies I picked up 32 little pods of Impatients (contrary to their name, they are like the one type of flower that are actually quite difficult to kill) for my front yard. Curb appeal yes? Autumn was again more than happy to "help". She was all over me and digging in the dirt, spreading it around the newly transported flowers.

Not as funny in pictures, but this is Autumn's muscle flex/spasm/shakey thing that she does. She's done it since she was like 2-3 months old. It still makes us laugh.

As you can see below, gardening is SERIOUS BUSINESS.

This girl is going to be a ballerina one day. She is also getting so tall - and into more and more stuff.

Well, it did get a little toasty in the sun.

My neighbor has those horrible ground cover weeds in his yard and they've migrated over to my flower bed and I am none too happy about it. They won't go away, are on some kind of vine and a pain to pull up. I gave up, so there you have the random bunch of weeds in the back.

After a full day working in the yard, I am spent! Autumn went to bed about a half hour earlier than usual, very willingly. She was exhausted from all her hard work as well. =)

2 comments

Thanks Annie! I found out this method a year or two ago when my sister in laws good friend had great success with it.

Plus, 5 gallon buckets for $2.50 is much cheaper than $8-$40 for some planters I saw! They're just as attractive to me, and the handle makes it great to move them when I need to.

A trick I didn't mention that my sister in law Chelsey told me about was putting packing peanuts about 1/3 of the way up the buckets so you don't have to use as much soil and to allow for better draining. I used the excess plastic planters I had to build them up a bit.